It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.
~Joyce Maynard

Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.
~Robert Fulghum

Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have anything to do with it.
~Haim Ginott

The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

It behooves a father to be blameless if he expects his child to be.
~Homer

If you have never been hated by your child you have never been a parent.
~Bette Davis

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.
~Robert Burton, "Anatomy of Melancholy," Democritus to the Reader, 1621

Children are a great comfort in your old age - and they help you reach it faster, too.
~Lionel Kauffman

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.
~Abigail Van Buren

The quickest way for a parent to get a child's attention is to sit down and look comfortable.
~Lane Olinghouse

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
~C.G. Jung, Integration of the Personality, 1939

Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
~Robert A. Heinlein

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.
~Roger Lewin

Simply having children does not make mothers.
~John A. Shedd

Although there are many trial marriages... there is no such thing as a trial child.
~Gail Sheehy

Children have more need of models than of critics.
~Carolyn Coats, Things Your Dad Always Told You But You Didn't Want to Hear

The beauty of "spacing" children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones - which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.
~Sydney J. Harris

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.
~Hodding Carter, Jr.

Your children tell you casually years later what it would have killed you with worry to know at the time.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
~Edward, Duke of Windsor, Look, 5 March 1957

The problem with children is that you have to put up with their parents.
~Charles DeLint

Sing out loud in the car even, or especially, if it embarrasses your children.
~Marilyn Penland

My mom used to say it doesn't matter how many kids you have... because one kid'll take up 100% of your time so more kids can't possibly take up more than 100% of your time.
~Karen Brown

A parent's love is whole no matter how many times divided.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,And that's what parents were created for.
~Ogden Nash, "The Parent," Happy Days, 1933

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.
~Charles R. Swindoll, The Strong Family

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.
~Walter Scott

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
~P.D. James, Time to Be in Earnest

There is a strong chance that siblings who turn out well were hassled by the same parents.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

If your children spend most of their time in other people's houses, you're lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you're blessed.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.
~Haim Ginott

Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.
~Andrew Carnegie

Now the thing about having a baby - and I can't be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it.
~Jean Kerr

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
~Oscar Wilde

There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.
~Chinese Proverb

There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have charge of children, but there can be no doubt that parents are the worst.
~George Bernard Shaw

A parent who has never apologized to his children is a monster. If he's always apologizing, his children are monsters.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

As parents, we guide by our unspoken example. It is only when we're talking to them that our kids aren't listening.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Mother Nature is wonderful. Children get too old for piggy-back rides just about the same time they get too heavy for them.
~Author Unknown

The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.
~Frank Pittman, Man Enough

If nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternatively, there would never be more than three in a family.
~Lawrence Housman

Parenthood is the passing of a baton, followed by a lifelong disagreement as to who dropped it.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models.... It's not like it was when I was growing up. My mom and my grandmother told me how it was going to be. If I didn't like it, they said, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out." Parents have to take better control.
~Charles Barkley

Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has instilled within each of us a powerful biological instinct to reproduce; this is her way of assuring that the human race, come what may, will never have any disposable income.
~Dave Barry

The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.
~Benjamin Spock, Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care

Having babies is fun, but babies grow up into people.
~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter, "The Price of Tomato Juice"

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
~Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, 1968

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.
~Erma Bombeck

I love to play hide and seek with my kid, but some days my goal is to find a hiding place where he can't find me until after high school.
~Author Unknown

The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.
~Sloan Wilson

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's. He is more particular.... The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother's always a Democrat.
~Robert Frost

Labor Day is a glorious holiday because your child will be going back to school the next day. It would have been called Independence Day, but that name was already taken.
~Bill Dodds

If I had my child to raise all over again,I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.I'd finger-paint more, and point the finger less.I would do less correcting and more connecting.I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.I'd do more hugging and less tugging.
~Diane Loomans, from "If I Had My Child To Raise Over Again"

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.
~Gloria Steinem, New York Times, 26 August 1971

Good, honest, hardheaded character is a function of the home. If the proper seed is sown there and properly nourished for a few years, it will not be easy for that plant to be uprooted.
~George A. Dorsey

Hot dogs always seem better out than at home; so do French-fried potatoes; so do your children.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it, or leave it.
~Buddy Hackett

Whenever I held my newborn baby in my arms, I used to think that what I said and did to him could have an influence not only on him but on all whom he met, not only for a day or a month or a year, but for all eternity - a very challenging and exciting thought for a mother.
~Rose Kennedy

Was there ever a grandparent, bushed after a day of minding noisy youngsters, who hasn't felt the Lord knew what He was doing when He gave little children to young people?
~Joe E. Wells

Ma-ma does everything for the baby, who responds by saying Da-da first.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Insanity is hereditary - you get it from your kids.
~Sam Levenson

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
~Colette, My Mother's House, 1922

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.
~P.J. O'Rourke

Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Conspicuously absent from the Ten Commandments is any obligation of parent to child. We must suppose that God felt it unnecessary to command by law what He had ensured by love.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

The one thing children wear out faster than shoes is parents.
~John J. Plomp

You see much more of your children once they leave home.
~Lucille Ball

Raising children is like making biscuits: it is as easy to raise a big batch as one, while you have your hands in the dough.
~E.W. Howe

A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.
~Judith Martin

Parenting is a stage of life's journey where the milestones come about every fifty feet.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
~Author Unknown

The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent.
~Mell Lazarus

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids.
~Bill Cosby, Fatherhood, 1986

The ideal home: big enough for you to hear the children, but not very well.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Parenthood is a lot easier to get into than out of.
~Bruce Lansky

Conscience is less an inner voice than the memory of a mother's glance.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Character is largely caught, and the father and the home should be the great sources of character infection.
~Frank H. Cheley

When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.
~The Talmud

A lot of parents pack up their troubles and send them off to summer camp.
~Raymond Duncan

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.
~Erma Bombeck

Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell, the name will carry.
~Bill Cosby

There are no illegitimate children - only illegitimate parents.
~Leon R. Yankwich

Sometimes, in a moral struggle, we discover the right thing to do - just as, on some cold day long ago, we discovered mittens pinned to our coat sleeve.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Instant availability without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play.
~Lotte Bailyn

If your parents didn't have any children, there's a good chance that you won't have any.
~Clarence Day

A child enters your home and for the next twenty years makes so much noise you can hardly stand it. The child departs, leaving the house so silent you think you are going mad.
~John Andrew Holmes

Setting a good example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age.
~William Feather, The Business of Life, 1949

Parents are not interested in justice; they are interested in quiet.
~Bill Cosby

Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion-picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
~Fran Lebowitz, "Parental Guidance," Social Studies, 1981

A child, like your stomach, doesn't need all you can afford to give it.
~Frank A. Clark

Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn't.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

These are my daughters, I suppose.But where in the world did the children vanish?
~Phyllis McGinley, "Ballad of Lost Objects," 1954

Getting down on all fours and imitating a rhinoceros stops babies from crying. (Put an empty cigarette pack on your nose for a horn and make loud "snort" noises.) I don't know why parents don't do this more often. Usually it makes the kid laugh. Sometimes it sends him into shock. Either way it quiets him down. If you're a parent, acting like a rhino has another advantage. Keep it up until the kid is a teenager and he definitely won't have his friends hanging around your house all the time.
~P.J. O'Rourke

In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage.
~Bill Cosby, Fatherhood, 1986

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.
~Fran Lebowitz, Social Studies

The trouble with being a parent is that by the time you are experienced, you are unemployed.
~Author Unknown

The trouble with having a stubbornness contest with your kids is that they have your stubbornness gene.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

If your kids are giving you a headache, follow the directions on the aspirin bottle, especially the part that says "keep away from children."
~Susan Savannah

In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to discipline a child is still a mystery to most fathers and... mothers. Only your grandmother and Ghengis Khan know how to do it.
~Billy Cosby

In bringing up children, spend on them half as much money and twice as much time.
~Author Unknown

From the moment of birth, when the Stone-Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence called love, as its father and mother and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potential.
~R.D. Laing

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.
~Bill Cosby, Fatherhood, 1986

It is one thing to show your child the way, and a harder thing to then stand out of it.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

What's done to children, they will do to society.
~Karl Menninger

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.
~George Bernard Shaw

You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.
~Polish Proverb

The clash between child and adult is never so stubborn as when the child within us confronts the adult in our child.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com